Compliance training decreases maladaptive behaviors in two people with developmental disabilities: report of five years' treatment

Compliance training was implemented to decrease non-compliance and avoidance behaviors in two women with severe mental retardation and psychiatric disorders over a five year period. In addition to compliance training, reinforcement schedules and behavioral momentum procedures were also included at various times. The program included training staff at home and at work to ensure generalization across settings and times, direct contact staff were used to assist in implementing compliance procedures at home and vocational trainers were used in the work setting. During baseline, Vanessa had pervasive non-compliant behaviors. Five years later, her non-compliance episodes had decreased by 89%. There were also significant decreases in aggression, self-abusive behaviors, and duration of non-compliance episodes. There were increases in interaction, productivity work, and reduced use of restraint. Annette was a woman with Generalized Anxiety Disorder with panic attacks. She had not left the home for several years. Once anxiety and panic attacks were under control maladaptive behaviors, which formerly functioned to avoid anxiety provoking situations, took on a different function, namely avoidance of work demands. Compliance training resulted in a reduction in non-compliance of 40–80% over a five year period. As a result psychoactive medication and restraint have been reduced and staff interaction and participation in campus and community activities have increased. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Photography: snapshots out of the unconscious

Abstract

This paper looks briefly at the relevance of infant and young child observation courses to work with adults and then goes on to describe how a normal young child aged 2% coped with two quite sudden changes in her life and the psychological mechanisms she used to manage her anxieties. These mechanisms - displacement, use of transitional objects, fantasy and symbolism - might equally be used by adults in later life when faced with uncertainty and change. Links are then made to psychotherapeutic work with adults.     

Comparison of Prolonged Exposure (PE) Coach to Treatment as Usual: A Case Series With Two Active Duty Soldiers

PE Coach is a mobile application (app) designed as a treatment companion to support patient and provider work during prolonged exposure (PE), a first-line treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. Little research exists about patients’ and providers’ reactions to mobile apps in the context of psychotherapy. The present study examined PE Coach with 2 soldiers to assess usability and satisfaction with the app. Soldiers completed 8 sessions of PE and used PE Coach during 4 of those sessions. Soldiers rated the PE Coach positively and reported higher levels of satisfaction during PE with PE Coach as compared with PE alone. Authors discuss their clinical observations from using PE Coach. The soldier and provider experiences demonstrate the potential value of PE Coach in enhancing treatment engagement and support the value of future research exploring mobile computing platforms to support evidence-based treatments, in general.     

On coding the position of letters in words: a test of two models

Open-bigram and spatial-coding schemes provide different accounts of how letter position is encoded by the brain during visual word recognition. Open-bigram coding involves an explicit representation of order based on letter pairs, while spatial coding involves a comparison function operating over representations of individual letters. We identify a set of priming conditions (subset primes and reversed interior primes) for which the two types of coding schemes give opposing predictions, hence providing the opportunity for strong scientific inference. Experimental results are consistent with the open-bigram account, and inconsistent with the spatial-coding scheme.     

Recent Developments in the Treatment of Depression

The cognitive and behavioral interventions can be as efficacious as antidepressant medications and more enduring, but some patients will be more likely to respond to one than the other. Recent work has focused on developing sophisticated selection algorithms using machine-learning approaches that answer the question, “What works best for whom?” Moreover, the vast majority of people suffering from depression reside in low- and middle-income countries where access to either psychotherapy or medications is virtually nonexistent. Great strides have been made in training nonspecialist providers (known as task sharing) to overcome this gap. Finally, recent work growing out of evolutionary psychology suggests that antidepressant medications may suppress symptoms at the expense of prolonging the underlying episode so as to increase the risk of relapse whenever someone tries to stop. We address each of these developments and their cumulative implications.     

STUDYING COGNITIVE ADAPTIVE PROCESSES BY MEANS OF THE SERIAL COLOUR WORD TEST

R osén , A nne -S ofie & S challing , D aisy . Studying cognitive adaptive processes by means of the Serial Colour Word test. A methodological analysis and a clinical application. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1972, 13, 17–26.—Performance on the Serial Colour Word Test (CWT), assumed to reflect cognitive adaptive processes, was studied in a group of criminals. By means of a latent profile analysis of clinical ratings and personality questionnaire scores subgroups of psychopathic and anxiety-prone subjects were identified. On the basis of findings by Smith et coll. psychopathic subjects were expected to perform differently from anxiety-prone subjects. Time scores on the CWT were analyzed by several methods. Expected group differences were not obtained. Methodological problems in the administration and scoring of the Serial CWT were discussed and some modifications suggested.     

TOLERANCE FOR EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED PAIN AS RELATED TO PERSONALITY

SCHALLING, D. Tolerance for experimentally induced pain as related to personality. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1971, 12, 271–281.–Relations between responses to noxious electrical stimulation (pain thresholds and tolerance levels) and personality variables were studied in a group of z6 students. Method of stimulation increase was found to be an important factor. When continuous stimulation increase was applied, the pain measures were significantly related only to scores in the Solidity scale of the Marke-Nyman Temperament inventory, low Solidity (extravert-impulsive) subjects showing high pain tolerance. When stimulation was increased in discrete steps (shocks), the pain measures were significantly related to scores in neuroticism-psychasthenia and extraversion scales, psychasthenic subjects being less and extravert subjects more tolerant of the stimulation. These results are consistently in the expected directions and are well in line with the implications of the personality concepts. Pain thresholds and tolerance levels were significantly correlated and showed similar patterns of correlation with the personality variables.     

Blood pressure and personality

Three groups of 18-yr-old male Ss were selected from a representative Swedish population according to strict blood-pressure criteria: hypertensives (systotic blood pressure above 146 and diastolic above 90), on two occasions, normotensives (systolic blood pressure between 124 and 131, population mean = 128) and hypotensives (systolic blood pressure between 100 and 106). As a part of a broad multidisciplinary study, personality inventory scales and unpleasantness ratings for various types of situations were administered. The findings for the hypertensives indicated lower assertiveness and higher anxiety-proneness, whereas the hypotensives, compared to normotensives, showed a more impulsive, acting-out personality pattern. The hypertensive group was subdivided according to digital vasoconstriction criteria. The non-vasoconstricted subgroup showed a more impulsive and ‘anger-out’ personality pattern, whereas the pattern obtained in the vasoconstricted subgroup was more similar to the classical hypertensive personality, characterized by anxiety and unexpressed anger.     

RATINGS OF ANXIETY-PRONENESS AND RESPONSES TO ELECTRICAL PAIN STIMULATION: Preliminary experiments in a group of young delinquents

A group of young delinquents clinically rated as manifesting a tendency to react with anxiety and tension was compared with a group from the same prison with predominantly 'psychopathic' traits according to clinical ratings. The delinquents were subjected to electrical pain stimulation and tested with a battery of tests and personality inventories. In line with the hypotheses, the more anxiety-prone delinquents showed greater sensitivity to pain, had lower scores in the Leg Persistence Test, shorter reaction times and more errors in an auditive choice reaction test. There were no significant differences with regard to the inventory variables.     

Allies Against Sexism: The Impact of Men’s Egalitarian Versus Paternalistic Confrontation on Women’s Empowerment and Well-Being

Sex Roles - Men as advantaged group members can be involved in actions against inequality. But how do women experience men’s confrontation of sexism? We examine how women perceive men’s...